Yesterday Has Turned Into Today

My life has become Groundhog Day.

After a restless night’s sleep, I’ve awakened to a day that I know is going to be filled with excitement and anxiety. I know it’s going to be filled with excitement and anxiety because I lived today yesterday. And now, because of rain in St. Louis, I relive yesterday today.

I’ve barely slept. I can’t focus at work. Or at school. My mind can’t make sense of anything that’s not related to baseball. And yet my only real job as it pertains to the game is to sit on the couch and watch it play out before me, and if I’m lucky, hear the iconic radio voice of Eric Nadel tell me that the Texas Rangers are World Series champions.

Every baseball fan dreams of their favorite team winning the World Series. Some fans have been more fortunate than others. Much, much more fortunate. But finally, after thirty-five years of loving the game, I’m waking up to a second consecutive morning in which a possible series deciding Game 6 is scheduled to be played, wishing the day would just hurry up and fast forward to game time. Sadly, I know the minutes are going to pass by at an excruciatingly slow pace, taking their time, refusing to turn into hours. I’m starting to understand the gravity of a word like infinite.

There have been times when being a Texas Rangers fan has been brutal. Each spring would always bring with it a new start. The summers would always bring what seemed like an overkill of heat in an effort to thoroughly melt the hopes of post season play. Doubters called the Rangers the Strangers. To truly love the Rangers you had to truly love the game.

Yet here the Strangers are, thirty-nine years after migrating from Washington, DC, after a miserable showing in last year’s World Series, after losing out in the off season on signing one of the best pitchers in the game, after surviving record breaking heat over the summer, staring down the improbable - two chances to get one more win. One more win to make history. One more win to show the world that one bad decision or error in judgment doesn’t have to define who you are as a leader. One more win to prove that all you’ve ever really wanted to do is play the game and play it right, and if you’re lucky enough, be called World Series champion. One win to prove to everyone who’s given up on you, and more importantly to yourself, that despite having fallen so far down you can actually get back up…and be forgiven.

Before the World Series began I predicted the Texas Rangers to win in seven games (2, 4, 5 & 7). I’m 5-0, yet somehow struggling mightily in my statistics class. If only my professor incorporated WHIP, ERA, and batting average with RISP into her lesson plan. But she doesn’t, so I’m forced to adjust.

I’m not the only one in our family with Red Fever.

Brady keeps asking why the Rangers aren’t playing the Dodgers. I tell him it’s because Daddy isn’t rich enough to buy the Dodgers and turn them into a good team. He says I should work harder to make more money so we can buy them. I tell him that if I work more then I’ll be home even less than I already am now, which means I won’t be able to practice t-ball with him to prepare for the spring season. He says we can practice on the PlayStation. A month shy of turning five and he’s already got all the answers. But as interested as he is in the Los Angeles Dodgers, it’s the Texas Rangers he stays up late rooting for, as if he fully understands the magnitude of what’s happening.

Kacie has a Rangers pillow that she hugs while watching the games, smothering it between her chest and knees on plays that just might go against our boys. She’s not as vocal as Brady and I are, but all you have to do is look at Kacie and watch as her eyes tell the story of what she’s feeling inside. She wants this as badly as we do.

Traci makes me go to the other room to listen to the game on the radio, because the delay between radio and television is significant enough that she doesn’t want me spoiling the play for her by cheering or moaning. Maybe if she looked at the radio like a mini time machine that gives us quick glances into the future we could be in the same room.

And now, because of the rainout, yesterday has turned into today and I face a dilemma: go to my Chicano Literature class tonight or go home and watch the game. By skipping class I’m sure to lose points on my final grade. I suppose the choice will be fitting since this semester we’ve read about the importance of family, the expectations put on you by both family and society, and the choices we make with regards to living up to the hopes and dreams that others have for us or deciding to make a mark on the world by doing something different, something that matters to us.

But there's no deciding in this decision. My choice was made with CJ Wilson's first pitch of the season. If the Texas Rangers are fortunate enough to win the World Series this year, I want to know that I was watching at home with my family when it happened. I want my children to look back twenty years from now and share with their own children their memories of the night in our cramped apartment when dreams finally came true, because maybe this could be their moment to say “I too want to conquer the improbable and achieve the impossible.”

But for now, I wait. Restlessly.

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Sorry, Tina Turner, But We Do Need Another Hero

If you’ve ever seen photos of me as a kid, listened to my mom tell one of her stories, or have heard me talk in my sleep, you know how desperately I want to be a hero, and own a time machine.

If you’ve never done any of those things, well, look at the blog’s title – I’ve put it right out there for you. Okay, maybe not the time machine part. I’m still trying to find a way to incorporate that into a more permanent facet of both the blog and my real life. And while some might argue that the world needs to be saved from me rather than by me, one thing is clear: I can’t save it alone.

Last October I wrote about Pancreatic Cancer and how it took a good family friend from us. I wrote that Pancreatic Cancer has the highest mortality rate among all the cancers yet receives only 2% of federally funded money for cancer research. I asked for your support by donating to The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer and the Pancreatic Cancer Research Walk.

This is where I again come to you. I’m asking you to become a hero in your own right. If reading my rants and perils of wisdom (yes, I meant perils and not pearls…) and random thoughts has made you laugh, cry, or question my ability to parent, please support me on Sunday, October 23 by donating $5 today. Think of it as a yearly subscription that gives you an all access pass to the anecdotes that are my life. Five bucks is a steal. And well worth it if you ask me.

CLICK HERE to support Brady

Even Brady is getting in on the act and has become a hero. He goes to work with his mom every day and takes with him an empty yellow NESQUIK container that’s been transformed into a collection jar. When my wife’s co-workers offer to buy him something from the vending machines (which apparently from his stash of cash happens a lot) he simply tells them “No thank you. But you can put your money in here and help me make cancer die.” At four my son understands that being a hero is more than just putting Underoos on the outside of your clothes and trying to fly to school.

I get that there are a ton of worthwhile causes out there – causes that are equally as deserving as this one. There are actually a couple of other causes that are just as important to my family that we find ourselves supporting throughout the year. But today I am only asking your help in supporting one. The fight against Pancreatic Cancer.

Need help pushing the donate button? Fine.

Remember last week when Steve Jobs passed away? It was all you heard about from Facebook friends and real friends and co-workers for like two days, right? Well how many of those people actually knew that he was killed by Pancreatic Cancer? Not many that I communicated with. Now what if each of those people who said or posted something about his death was to have donated $5 to help find a cure? Or what if everyone who currently owns or has ever owned an Apple product donated $5 in Steve Jobs’ memory to help find a cure? Talk about an incredible way to give back to a man who did so much for the technological society as we know it. So why not do it? Today?

I purposefully waited to publish this post, not because I didn’t want to ask for your support, but because I didn’t want to provide you the chance to put off until tomorrow something you can do today. Too many times we keep putting life off until tomorrow, creating an endless loop of things we regret not doing and moments wasted by not living. Now is our chance to prove 1985 Tina Turner wrong. Now is your chance to be another hero, to be like Brady and want to make cancer die.

The walk is October 23^rd. Eleven days to try and make a lifetime’s worth of difference. Will you support me by donating $5 to the Pancreatic Cancer Research Walk?

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Giving Up. Letting Go. Saying Goodbye.

Today I admit defeat.

Okay, maybe not exactly defeat, but it sure feels like it.

You see, after much debate, we’ve sold the Mustang. You know, the one that Kacie and I were supposed to spend the next several years restoring for her 16^th birthday? The same 1966 Mustang that resulted in my starting this blog? Yeah. That one.

Maybe defeat is exactly right.

Before buying the car I’d spent a ton of time weighing the pros and cons of making a decision of this magnitude. I tried to think of everything. I thought I had it all planned out.

But who knew thirteen months ago that our little blue slice of Americana would be possessed.

Perhaps possessed is too strong of a word. Schizophrenic, maybe?

I’ve chronicled its issues with it stopping. At first the car simply wanted no part of the process. The brakes broke. Literally. We had them fixed. A few weeks later, the brakes broke again. Nothing as dramatic as the first time around, by thankfully I’d been babying her (the Mustang) because I could tell something was not right. Perhaps it was payback for my calling her a bitch the first time around. We made up. We both moved on. She ran like a dream.

But towards the beginning of summer her disposition changed. Stopping was no longer an issue. She simply didn’t want to go, or more specifically, start. It was like every day was Monday morning for her.

We replaced the battery. The alternator. The starter. Just as I was ready to break the B Word out on her again, she relented. That lasted less than a week. Three days, to be precise.

The car was always giving Traci fits. In some ways Traci was scared of the car. She knew how finicky our little filly could be, which made her timid. The car sensed this. Every time. We pushed. The car pushed back. Harder. Now that I think about it, the car was acting more like a teenager than something possessed. Having raised five kids, my mom would argue that the two are one and the same. This time the car would start but not keep running. See the correlation between teenager and schizophrenic?

Traci and I had a decision to make: how much more money were we willing to immediately pump into this car without seeing immediate results?

The practicality of owning a classic car was also becoming less and less apparent. It’d been months since Kacie and I worked on the car together. My work and school schedule just hadn’t allowed for it, and there was no end in sight. Our bedroom was turning into a surplus parts warehouse with new parts piling up in different corners, collecting dust.

We grew tired of depending on friends, family, or co-workers for rides to work when the car was out of commission. I was tired of being dropped off at work an hour and a half early and picked up an hour late because I had to wait for Traci to pick me up. Our family’s dream was turning into a nightmare, so we decided to let the car go.

Kacie wouldn’t come outside and tell her goodbye. I asked if she was sad. She said she’d wanted a convertible Mustang anyway. She didn’t look me in the eye when she said it.

Brady came out to say goodbye. He almost cried. Fitting that the two men of the house were the only ones fighting back tears as the new owners were strapping the fifth member of our family down to a trailer – guess she got her very own straight jacket after all– to haul her away.

Again I feel like I’ve failed as a dad. One more thing on a long list of things I either tried to do but couldn’t or did but shouldn’t have.

It’s like when Clark W. Griswold drags the dog to its death, wrecks the family station wagon in the desert, or drops dead Aunt Edna on his brother-in-law’s doorstop during the comedy of errors that is his family’s vacation. Why didn’t he just call it a day and drive back home to Illinois? Did pushing through at all cost make him a better dad? Was that really better than just giving up?

Thinking of this now reminds me of when I posted the question on Twitter last week asking “At what point does giving up not constitute as giving up but as finally realizing you’re outnumbered in a world full of idiots?” I’m not saying that I’m an idiot. Rather it makes me think of a response from a friend that in a nutshell said that sometimes giving up isn’t giving up as much as it is letting go.

Funny how this whirlwind of thoughts running through my mind brings me to letting go, especially considering the real reason for getting the car in the first place was because I was trying to find a way to hold onto Kacie as long and as hard as I could because I was afraid of letting her go. Not only have I been given a lesson in letting go, now I’m going to have to redesign the blog. Awesome.

Letting go 1, Brad 0

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